215. 8 Truths About Me

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, episode 215, 8 Truths About Me.

This podcast is for people who know that living an extraordinary life is not easy or comfortable. It’s so much better than that. This is Better Than Happy, and I’m your host, Jody Moore.

Hey, everyone. How’s it going? Welcome to episode 215. That’s a lot of podcast episodes. If you’re new here, welcome. I’m so thrilled that you’re here. Thank you for giving me a little time and attention. I’m going to try to take really good care of you. You don’t have to go back to episode one and start from the beginning, although you can if you want to.

But you can really start anywhere. I try to set this podcast up so that you can join in anywhere and then go back and kind of listen to maybe any that have titles that stand out to you, that sound relevant. Today, I am going to share eight truths about myself, and I have a few confessions to make.

First of all, this is the second time I’ve recorded this episode, and not because anything went wrong with the technology or anything, but because I struggled really with this episode, with deciding what to even share and how to go about it. And after I recorded it, I even sent it off to my podcast production company to be edited and everything, and then I was like wait, I need to do it again.

So I don’t know – I mean obviously I do know why. Because I’m going to be talking about myself here, which is first of all, something that I try not to do a lot because I was raised by a father who taught me that you don’t talk about yourself. You be interested in other people, which I think is a good tip, but I also think that sharing parts of our self and sharing what’s going on for us is how we connect and can be really powerful.

So I want to preface by saying that the reason I’m going to talk about myself on this episode unapologetically is not to try to boost myself up. In fact, I’m going to share some things that I’m not completely proud of, as you’ll hear. But it’s really just to show you the truth about me. Just show you a more complete picture of me.

Because I think some of you listen to me and you think that because I understand this work and because I’m sharing tools here with you that I just have it all figured out, and that I do all this perfectly and I’m always content or always in control of my emotions, and always choosing thoughts that serve me.

And that is just not true, my friends. And even though I try to tell you that all the time, some of you don’t believe me. So I really just want to be vulnerable, which is why this is so uncomfortable. This is totally vulnerable for me to share these things, but I’m totally willing to do it in the name of helping you be more compassionate with yourself.

I want to show you what it looks like to understand this work and to still be a human being with a human life, to be able to apply tools and be compassionate with yourself in the areas where you haven’t mastered it yet. The truth is some of these tools I apply and I make tons of progress and I feel like I’ve got a handle on, and then something happens and I fall back into old habits and I have to go back and do it again.

So I don’t think that the work of managing your mind and emotions is a linear, always progressive process. It’s kind of a messy up and down, back and forth type process and I love, love, love doing it. One of the things I will say is that I’ve gotten really, really good at observing myself with compassion.

So even the things that I want to change, even the things I’m not totally proud of, I’m still very compassionate and pretty good at mostly not judging myself for them. So these are eight truths about me. Now, what makes them truths? Well, of course, it’s just that I believe them.

So I’m not saying these are eight facts. Most of these things that I’m going to share with you are just my thoughts. They don’t go in the circumstance line of my model. They’re the way that I’ve observed myself, which means of course that I’m creating that in my result line of my model as well.

And again, like I said, some of them are limiting beliefs that I don’t necessarily want to hold on to, some of them are just thoughts that I consider to be more observations that are more neutral. Some of them are even positive that I really like about me, and many of them have some of both. They have some upside and they have some drawbacks if I’m not careful.

Okay, so here we go. Number one thing I’m going to share is that I am a very shy person. I really am. I was especially shy as a child. I kind of talked about this in other episodes before, but I used to pretend to be sick so that I could go home from school because I didn’t want to go out to recess. I liked school fine, but I really hated recess because I was sure I would have no one to talk to and no one to play with and I would get terrible stomach aches just thinking about it.

So I’ve outgrown that quite a bit. I’ve learned how to be more comfortable in social settings, but I feel like I still – again, my thought is that I’m actually still a shy person. In college I was lucky enough to always be able to find friends who were more outgoing but I’m not the one that reaches out initially and initiates social situations.

When I move into a new ward or I’m in a new setting with new people, I’m awkward in social settings. I get nervous. I wonder what people will think. I have all kinds of insecurities. I’m insecure about the aging process that’s showing up so much for me lately, in the last few years especially. I’m totally insecure about my hair because I have naturally curly hair.

My whole life people commented on my hair and how much they loved my hair, which is so nice but it made me really conscious of my hair. So I have a lot of insecurity around that. Around my clothes, my body, do I sound intelligent enough, am I fitting in. I am a shy, insecure person overall. That’s it.

Now again, I don’t judge myself for that. I don’t tell myself I should be more confident; I should be able to go into this situation and feel totally good about myself and remember that what other people think doesn’t matter. I really don’t do that. I just allow myself to be uncomfortable and shy and I kind of observe it and I observe it with compassion and love.

Alright, number two. I kind of feel like I’m pretending in my life as an adult in some ways. There are some ways in which I’m not pretending at all, but there are some areas of my life where I notice that I sort of pretend because I’m afraid to be or say or think what I really think.

Here are some of the ways in which I feel like I’m pretending. When it comes to being a mother, I sort of feel like I’m pretending, like I’m playing house. And these kids here, yes, they’re my kids but it’s kind of like I said hey Macy, you be the daughter and I’ll be the mom. Isaac, you be the son and dad will be the dad.

I feel a little bit like we’re pretending because I don’t feel like I’m a lot more wise than my children. I certainly don’t feel like I’m more responsible. I feel like they are more strict with themselves and their expectations of people than I am, and I find myself thinking thoughts like oh, I think I’m supposed to care about that, or I think I’m supposed to worry about these things. I think I’m supposed to give my kids chores or discipline them in this way or get upset when they say those things.

But what is really happening internally is that I don’t really want to do any of it, and I don’t care. Not that I don’t care about them. Of course, I love them fiercely. But I just am very laid back about how my children behave and things like that. And I don’t know that that’s a good thing or a bad thing. So sometimes I tell myself I should care more, I should be more invested, and then I sort of have to pretend.

I feel this way in my business. Like I’m pretending to be the owner and manager of my business when I really am the owner, but in my head, I’m an employee. I’m just someone who is helping move the machine forward, who is in there doing the work. That’s actually what I love to do. I love to do the work.

I love doing the work more than I love leading and managing people. I find doing the work to be much easier and much more enjoyable. And yet, my company needs me to be the leader and the manager, and so I’m sort of pretending to be that. Like I’m holding these team meetings, but I’m thinking what are we supposed to do on these meetings? I don’t know. I think I’m supposed to be in charge so I’ll just pretend.

And it’s working pretty well and I have an amazing team luckily, so that makes it easier. But I sort of feel like I’m pretending. I feel like sometimes even in my church calling, I have to do some pretending. Because I’ll get a calling and I’ve had many different callings but sometimes I get a calling and I have thoughts like oh, I think I’m supposed to do this thing, or I think I’m supposed to think about it in this way, or I’m supposed to act this way when I’m in this calling.

But it feels sort of foreign to me to be that person, or act in that way, or worry about these things, or even be dramatic about things that people are being dramatic about. And sometimes I think, should I be doing that because I’m in this position? And I really try to be conscious of it and not be someone that I’m not, but there’s times when I have to sort of pretend.

Overall, I feel like I’m sort of pretending when it comes to being an adult. And maybe some of you feel the same way. I don’t know that I’m unusual in this way. You know, we always say I’m 44 but I feel the same way I did when I was 19. So maybe that’s common.

But I know growing up, I wasn’t the goof-off in school. I was very well-behaved. But I liked the goof-offs. I liked to hang out with them. I laughed at them. I thought they were hilarious. I would encourage them even to goof off more because I liked to be entertained and have fun.

So I feel like as an adult, I kind of am still the goof-off but I’m trying to be responsible and be a mother and be a business owner, and be in these positions that I am in my life. It feels a little bit like I’m pretending. There you go. That’s number two. Let’s go on to number three.

Number three has to do more with the actions that I take, which of course come from the way I view myself. So some of my bad habits that I buffer with are food and shopping. Those are my main go-to buffers. So if you don’t know what a buffer is, you got to get into Be Bold because in September, we’re going to do Stop Buffering.

So I think this episode doesn’t come out until September, so when you hear it, we’re going to be doing stop buffering, so if you’re not in there, get in there and join us. But a buffer is a way to escape emotion. It’s a habit that we go to that has then a negative consequence. So it’s something that we want to stop doing because of the result of the buffer, but it prevents us from having to feel bored or frustrated or it gives us a momentary hit of pleasure in some way.

And my buffers of choice are food and shopping. So I like a Diet Coke and a cookie when things get stressful. Or I’m bored, or I need a little pick-me-up, or I’m overwhelmed, or I’m tired. I like to go to the Nordstrom Rack when I need to get away from my kids and have some down time, or I like to get online and order something and get a package on the doorstep from whatever online boutique.

So these aren’t habits that I want to keep because they’re not serving me, and again, neither one of these I would say is an overwhelming problem. I don’t have a huge weight problem and I’m not spending money that I don’t have, but I still want to work on them because I want to really work on what’s on the other side of those buffers.

Those buffers are my way of escaping my real life or they’re providing me some false pleasure, which I would rather get in the form of real achievement, real success, real goal setting in my life. So those are my two buffers of choice. I’m always working on them.

Sometimes I do better than others. I’ve made lots of progress in both areas, compared to where I was a couple of years ago but I definitely haven’t mastered either. I still find myself going to one or both of those things on occasion as a buffer.

Number four. Number four truth I want to tell you guys is that I do not try to be an amazing mother. I really don’t. Because I used to. When I first had kids – I had my first two kids were only 15 months apart. That was really close. That was really tough. And I thought I want to be an amazing mother. I want to be the best mother I can. I want to be a really good mother.

I thought that sounded like a noble thing to want to do. What I found was that it was a terrible way for me to think about it because I could never measure up to what I thought an amazing mother would be like. I had a very amazing mother and I can never measure up to her. I could never be this picture that I created in my head of what an amazing mother was because it was so outside of my wheelhouse of things I was good at or things that I even wanted to be good at.

What I realized makes me a better mother is to just try to be me. Being an amazing mother is too big. It’s too important. Our kids are so, so valuable, right? I could never do it. So instead of trying to adjust myself to be this picture of what I think a great mother is, I lean in to being me.

And guess what? It turns out who I am is actually a pretty darn good mother but it’s my own version of it. It doesn’t look the same as it did with my mom. It doesn’t look the same as it does with any of the other mothers that I kind of have in my head. It’s just me with my strengths and all my weaknesses. It’s me being confident. It’s me taking care of my emotions, and then it’s me loving my kids fiercely.

And there’s a lot of things I do really well that I’m proud of when it comes to being a mother, and there’s a lot of things that I’m not good at at all, that I’m working on when it comes to being a mother. But instead of trying to be an amazing mother, I just try to be the mother that I am. And I own where I’m at, I meet myself where I’m at, and I love me the whole way, and it’s so much better.

Alright, number five. Number five, I want to share with you something about what I do as a coach. So I am very, very confident as a coach. And I haven’t always been. The first year or so of my coaching, I would go in and out of confidence, thinking sometimes I can totally do this, and other times, I don’t know what I’m doing at all.

But today, I’m pretty confident as a coach. I would say the majority of the time. Now, a lot of people think that that confidence comes from all the things that I know. They’ll say to me, you are so wise. How do you know so much? And it’s so kind. I appreciate when people say that, but that is not where my confidence comes from as a coach and in fact, I would say I became even more confident as a coach once I realized this.

That what makes me an amazing coach is that I know that I don’t know the answer. My clients know the answer. The wisdom exists within them. What I do as a coach is I show my clients what’s really true and then I help them access their own wisdom. I help them get themselves out of the way and then we find the wisdom together that lives within them.

It’s kind of like mining their brains for the truth and for the answers. And that is super fun to me. That is why I’m so confident as a coach. It doesn’t matter what the topic is someone brings to me. It doesn’t matter what they want help on. It doesn’t matter what their problem is or what their goal is that they want to achieve. I can help them get there because I can help them clean up their thinking and show them what’s true, and then I can help them find the wisdom and the answers within them.

That is what coaching is. I think that’s the best kind of coaching, and that’s what I get the privilege of doing, and that is what I’m really good at after almost six years of practicing it over and over again. Thanks to all of you for letting me coach you.

Alright, number six thing I want to share with you is that I am a pretty insensitive person. Now, that sounds terrible. I don’t mean it the way it sounds. I don’t mean I’m insensitive in that I don’t care about how people feel. The reason I’m using the word insensitive is because I haven’t found the right word to describe what I’m trying to say, so I’m going to call it insensitive and then I’m going to ask you help to help me name it.

So there are people in this world, and many people that I love, many people that are my close friends or that are my family members who are highly sensitive people. Meaning they feel emotion pretty intensely, and they feel oftentimes physical sensation intensely as well. A highly sensitive person, their nervous system is wired in such a way that they feel everything a little bit more intensely.

So sometimes they get emotional and they cry more often. It’s because they’re feeling emotion stronger. That’s what tears are. But anyway, highly sensitive people. We’re starting to understand a lot more about them. There’s a lot of information out there about them. I’ve done a lot of reading, and one in three people is considered highly sensitive.

But on the opposite end of the spectrum is more what I am, which is lower in sensitivity. And I Googled the term insensitive, and it doesn’t really say anything nice. So that’s not what I’m trying to say, but what I’m trying to say is that I don’t feel emotion real intensely. I don’t cry very easily, especially for a woman. It’s common for women to be more sensitive and for men to be less sensitive, although that’s definitely not always the case.

A lot of people in my family, a lot of the men in my family are highly sensitive, and some of the women are less so. But at any rate, I don’t cry real easily. Now, some people look at me and say oh my gosh, you’re so lucky because in many ways, this is a gift because I’m pretty laid back. I don’t get upset very easily. I don’t get stressed out very easily. I don’t get worried hardly ever.

So it’s a huge gift in many ways, but it’s also a bummer in many ways because it means I don’t feel joy as intensely. I don’t feel happiness as intensely as most people. So if you’re a sensitive person, I want you to remember that it means you experience everything more intensely, and that’s the human experience of being alive.

What I crave is the experience of being alive, and I love emotional experiences because they’re harder for me to experience. So you might say that I think kind of like a man. I do think more like most men than most women. I’m more of the let’s make a decision and move on, let’s not get dramatic, let’s look at the facts, and that again, serves me well as a coach. It serves me well in many areas of my life.

There’s times when having a little bit more of the healer personality in me would be useful, and of course I can access it any time, but my natural default is to think more like a man. In fact, my dad’s name is Jeff and my parents used to call me Jeff in a dress when I was younger. I think very much like my dad, and at the same time I have a lot of interests and similarities to my mom as well.

Alright, number seven. This one has to do with feedback, and this is just again, something I’ve noticed about myself that I believe. It’s just a thought. But the thought is that I either take feedback with zero drama and run with it or I don’t hear it at all.

So there’s not very much in between. And here’s what I think the difference is. There are certain people who in my mind know what they’re talking about. Maybe they’re further along in their goals than I am. For whatever reason, I’ve decided that their opinion is significant and I trust it, and when they give me feedback and say you should try this or you should do that, I’m pretty low drama about it.

I’m like alright, let’s do it. Now, it doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes feel uncomfortable. So Brooke Castillo is one of my coaches who will occasionally give me suggestions or feedback on something I should do in my business. Sometimes some very scary things like investing a lot of money in Facebook ads for example.

And I’ll have the initial drama of that’s so scary, but because I trust her so much and I value her opinion and I know that she’s a successful entrepreneur doing the types of things that I want to be doing, then I kind of embrace it and say okay, let’s do that, and I get running.

On the opposite end of the continuum is that I sometimes don’t hear feedback at all. So for example, I don’t really solicit a lot of feedback from my clients. It’s not because I don’t value their opinion. I absolutely do. But I also know that they all are going to have different opinions, and that there’s always going to be some outlier opinions.

And so my head kind of goes to the place of I can’t please all of them and I’m not going to make certain changes or sacrifices in my business in the name of one person who’s upset that might then affect other people negatively. And so I kind of go to like, let’s not gather feedback at all.

So again, I’m not saying that’s a good thing. That’s something that I want to work on is how do I filter feedback appropriately, how do I still get feedback from my listeners and clients because I’m interested in what they have to say of course, and how do I filter out outliers and make decisions within my business that I feel good about and still hear opinions.

So it’s definitely an area that I want to work on. Alright, number eight, final thing I’m going to tell you about myself today is – and this one by the way, I was really hesitant to share with you guys and let me tell you why. Number eight is that I have to get coached and coach myself regularly around how much people love me and my work.

Now, this sounds silly to say it out loud and the reason that I was afraid to share it with you is because I don’t want you to stop coming up and sharing your success stories with me or telling me how this work has changed your life or writing in to me with your awesome stories you send about how you’re applying it. I want you to keep doing all of that.

The reason I have to get coached around it is because it’s so uncomfortable to me because it puts the focus on me. And what happens, let’s say I’m at a live event or I’m speaking somewhere and someone comes up to me and they tell me how much their life has changed. In my head is all this chatter.

What it sounds like is this; you didn’t really change their life, Jody. They changed their life because you tell a lot of people this, and not everybody’s life changes. And then they say you’re just so amazing, I just love you, I just think you’re so great. And in my head is chatter that says well, you’re not that great. They don’t really know you. They don’t know all your problems and all your faults.

So at the end of hanging out with somebody, or especially when there’s a large group of people telling me I’m amazing, I am exhausted. I’m probably a little bit exhausted because it’s a lot of stimulus to take in, meeting new people like that, but the main reason I’m exhausted is because of all that chatter and beating up of myself happening in my head to try to counteract all the kindness that doesn’t align with my view of myself.

So that is something that I’m working on. Again, I’ve been coached on it before and I continue to coach myself and get coached on it. Please don’t stop sharing it with me because there’s still that part of me that’s so flattered by it and loves hearing it, especially loves hearing the success that you’re having in your own life.

That makes me so happy for you, but also because I want to learn how to be with myself and be peaceful with myself, and not have to down-talk myself, just like I wouldn’t down-talk somebody I love who is being complimented. I wouldn’t say to them you’re not that great, they did it themselves. I would say you are amazing and you should own it and let it land. And that is work that I am trying to do on myself as well.

So there you go. Eight things, eight truths about me. Take it or leave it. Like I said, the message I hope that you’ll get, aside from like, I’m a hot mess just like everybody else is that you can observe these things in yourself. You don’t have to judge them and you don’t have to hurry and solve for them. Even when I do solve for these, I will always have eight kind of vulnerable things to be able to share with you about me. It’s never going to go away.

I’ll solve for one thing and then there will be something else that will come up. I just believe in this lifetime, those things will never go away. I don’t think that perfection or complete self-mastery in this lifetime is available to the majority of us.

So I’m on this journey with you. I hope that something that I’ve shown you here today helps you first of all, understand where I’m coming from a little bit better, but second of all, be able to be more compassionate and aware of your own self and to observe things that you want to change without beating yourself up or judging you.

That is my hope today. Alright you guys, thanks for listening. Thanks for indulging me as I talked about myself. I love you all so much and I will see you next week on another episode. Take care.

If you have a question about something you’ve heard me talk about on this podcast or anything else going on in your life, I want to invite you to a free public call, Ask Jody Anything. I will teach you the main coaching tool I use with all of my clients and the way to solve any problem in your life, and we will plug in real life examples.

Come to the call and ask me a question anonymously or just listen in. Go to jodymoore.com/askjody and register before you miss it. I’ll see you there.